Paz Fábrega, the first Costa Rican filmmaker to scoop a VPRO Tiger Award in Rotterdam, for her debut “Cold Water of the Sea (“Agua fria de mar”) in 2010, has secure further funding for her fourth feature “To the Future” (“Al Futuro”) from PUA-the Uruguayan Audiovisual Program, via co-producer Federico Moreira of La Mayor Cine (“Utama,” “Aurora”).

The hybrid doc in post, produced by Fábrega’s Temporal Films in Costa-Rica, will be pitched at the curated Last Push session of ECAM Forum co-production market unspooling June 9-11 at Madrid Matadero.
Joining the strong Latin American partners is Guatemalan producer Pamela Guinea (“Tesoros”), as well as Spain’s Carla Sospedra Salvadó of Edna Cinema attached to award-winning pics such as SXSW’s “Mamífera” by Liliana Torres, “Correspondences” by Carla Simón and Dominga Sotomayor and the upcoming “Memorial” by Sergi Lopez which scooped a Filmin Award at ECAM Forum 2024. 

Additional financing comes from Costa Rica’s El Fauno Fund and the Catalan government’ ICEC cultural agency.

Distinguished for her craft in filming human intimacy with naturalism, Fábrega returns here to the topic of motherhood featured in her earlier films “Restless” and “Aurora.” 

The latter, highlighted in Variety review for the helmer’s “deep respect for the characters coupled with the performers’ inner warmth,” had a strong festival run in 2021, taking in Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Mar del Plata and Göteborg.

With “To the Future,” in a daring turn, Fábrega captures her own experience of raising two kids, while navigating financial pressure and her artistic cravings. Invited to enter the filmmaker’s intimate space, we get acquainted to her young boys Kai (3) and Matti (5).

“While Paz searches for a job, she rents out a room in her house to tenants who come and go at the fleeting pace of Airbnb tourism. The children’s overwhelming emotions clash with the weight of financial pressure, and the days blur into one another,” reads the logline. As the kids fight harder for their mother’s attention, Matti discovers a talent for prolonged apnea, dangerously holding his breath for longer and longer stretches of time.

“When my kids were born, it felt like a secret world opened up, very different from what I thought it would be,” confessed the filmmaker who felt an urge to tell the world “how kids really are-wild, intensely violent, completely fragile,” and to portray her own morphing into motherhood. “Suddenly the [kids] behaviour which drove me crazy also fascinated me. I didn’t want to tame them, but rather ask myself when I became so tame. As if I myself had to become wilder to be able to live together.”

Sospedra, who was introduced to Fábrega through filmmaker Natalia Cabrera, praised “To the Future”’s inspiring themes. “One of its central themes is demystifying motherhood and showing the reality of how difficult it can be to raise future human beings – especially if you have a career in the film business! Then at its core, and equally important to me, is how children become independent through the development of their imagination.”

“The film is also about creativity and the legacy Paz is passing on to her children,” added the Catalan producer. “Through the process of making a film together, she is giving them the power to create, to imagine, and to envision the future they want to build for themselves.”

For Fábrega, due to the personal subject matter, shaping the narrative was “the hardest part.” “When it’s your life and especially things that you’re going through, you don’t have the distance to help you see,” she admitted. She therefore put together a strong team around her who helped her build the scenes out of her everyday life with her kids, and shot “in a very intimate way, not typical to documentaries, to make the material alive and free.”

The group of photographers included Roberto Murillo – Fábrega’s own life partner, Emiliano Zúñiga, Adrianne Robert and Karin Porley.

On the editing team are Aina Calleja (credited for Aina Clotet’s Cannes Critics’ Week winning film “Viva”), Clea Eppelin, and Magdalena Schinca who scanned more than 45 hours of footage filmed over two years.  
Fábrega, who says the title was suggested by her eldest son Matti, sees her pic as “as sort of letter to the future.” “The future is something I think about a lot, what kind of world will my kids have. I feel like, if there is any hope ahead, it has to do with turning our attention back to birth and death; for the important things that shape our lives and see them as they are; raw, complex, miracles. And taking care of each other.”

At ECAM Forum, Fábrega and Sospedra will be looking for sales agents and distributors. “I’m really looking forward to having feedback on the film. This film doesn’t follow any traditional structure, so it will be very interesting to see what it does to people,” said Fábrega.

“To the Future,” which scooped the Music Library & SFX Award at the Mecas market in Las Palmas in early May, will be vying for the ECAM Forum Last Push €15,000 ($17,500) prize.